Fantagraphics Blog

Our pal Jenn Chan sent us these awesome photos of a weekend baking jag inspired by Krazy Kat (and perhaps even Chris Ware's design). Her husband was "feeling really bummed about the Mets so I made these to cheer him up." Lucky man. Well, aside from those Mets, anyway. At least he's not a Mariners fan. Back to the Kupkakes. Mmmmmm:    

Left: Rock Bottom, Michael Shilling (2009) Right: Misery Loves Comedy, Ivan Brunetti (2007) I don't mean to necessarily suggest the above is a swipe — I think it could be entirely coincidental. But I was just struck by not only the design similarities (down to the sans serif fonts), but the similarly nihilistic titles the designs serve. Did the tone of each title drive the design to similar, bleak places independent of the other, or did the designer of Rock Bottom look to Misery for similarly bleak inspiration? And what was Ivan riffing on when he designed his book? I have no answers, I…

SHOCK AND AWE AT GEORGETOWN SECOND SATURDAY ART ATTACK ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11 Adventurous arts enthusiasts are again invited to invade Georgetown on Saturday, October 11 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM for the Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack. This lively celebration of creative diversity features provocative programming in visual, performing, and applied arts at over 30 locations throughout the historic Georgetown industrial arts district. Among the many highlights: Georgetown artist Tina Randolph's cement and encaustic paintings on steel panels at Revival Home & Garden; a Day of the Dead group show, "Día de los Muertos," including Chris Lefebvre, Amaranta Ibarra,…

Today we're bringing you an advance look at Bill Schelly's upcoming biography of all-time comics great Joe Kubert, Man of Rock (coming next month). Click here if the slideshow doesn't appear above.

Flog!'s North Carolina Bureau Chief Rob Clough attended the opening of the Dash Shaw show at Duke this past Friday night and was kind enough to provide us with this exclusive report: 

Dash Shaw's show BOTTOMLESS at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University debuted on Thursday, September 25th. The well-attended opening was a multi-media affair that was as much about process as it was about a final product. The way that curator Diego Cortez designed the show gave a unique glimpse into Shaw's method. By juxtaposing Shaw's original pencils against his color sheets on the walls of the exhibit, the viewer could see the way Shaw composes color for his pages is unusual. On display were pencils and color pages from his webcomic BodyWorld and MOME short stories "Train" and the upcoming "Satellite CMYK". That latter story may well be his best effort yet.

There were also some other unusual entries, like a drawing Shaw made of himself and Barack Obama as surfers.

The Boston Phoenix talks to Robert Pollard about Town of Mirrors and his new band, Boston Spaceships.

About eight years ago I took these photos of Jim Lee's figure for Raphael, the Ninja Turtle. And, yes, I do dream of doing the equivalent of Batman Collected with TMNT. And, yes, I realize that I'm no Geoff Spear but, actually, the person I was trying to be in Photography school was David Levinthal.

This show includes Zak Sally and Tom Kaczynski and looks pretty darn good to me!